Islamic State's online supporters include 300 Americans -report

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Active online supporters of
the Syria-based Islamic State movement now include about 300
people identifiable as Americans, said a study by academic
experts published on Tuesday.

George Washington University's Program on Extremism said in
the study that the number of other Americans who passively
"consume" Islamic State propaganda runs to "several thousand,"
though they are not necessarily active supporters of the group.

Twitter is the "platform of choice" most widely used by the
active core of American supporters of Islamic State, it said.

American ISIS activists and sympathizers also use other
social media, ranging from open forums such as Facebook, Google+
and Tumblr to more secretive messaging apps including Kik,
Telegram, surespot and the dark web, the study said.

American online ISIS supporters are sufficiently active and
noisy to have established themselves as "nodes," or leading
voices promoting Islamic State themes, while others serve as
"amplifiers," who repost materials from more prominent
activists.

The study said U.S. Islamic State activists have helped
craft a "unique innovation" in militant messaging. This involves
creation of "shout out" accounts, which enable activists to
"introduce new pro-ISIS accounts to the community and promote
newly created accounts of previously suspended users, allowing
them to quickly regain their pre-suspension status."

The study noted that, although American social media
accounts linked to ISIS are regularly suspended, among the
activists such suspensions have become a "badge of honor and a
means by which an aspirant can bolster his or her legitimacy."

Operators of suspended accounts usually set up and start
using a newly created account, using only a variation of the
previous user name, "within hours" of most suspensions, it said.

Even though Islamic State's forerunners first emerged after
the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Islamic State's "message did
not exist" before the organization established itself in Syria
and became involved in a civil war against the government of
President Bashar al Assad, said Lorenzo Vidino, one of the
study's principal authors.

Vidino cited FBI statistics indicating that U.S. authorities
are currently pursuing 900 terrorism-related investigations in
all 50 U.S. states. His study noted that 71 individuals have
been charged by U.S. authorities with ISIS-related offenses
since March 2014, with 51 of those arrests occurring in 2015.
(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Steve Orlofsky)